


III.

by tcourtois



Series: Fork in the road [3]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 01:59:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3272612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tcourtois/pseuds/tcourtois





	III.

**_I._ **

****

**I have your husband here.**

_Tell him to go to hell_ , I thought tomyself. I put my phone calmly down on the dresser and walked away from it, circling the room a few times before heading into the en-suite bathroom and running myself a bath.

_Marco_

“She’s not answering, mate. Do you want to tell me what you did now?” I dug around in the back of the fridge for my last two beers.

“It’s complicated. I’ve just been an idiot.” He accepted the beer from me, lifting it to his lips and taking a long drink.

“I’ll just imagine the worst then shall I?” I drank from my own bottle, sitting down opposite him. My mind was circling the first thought I had when I opened the door to him. He hadn’t even opened his mouth when I had drawn my conclusion. He had cheated.

There had been a nasty rumour going around the BVB camp that I had ignored. I liked Ava and I liked Mats. When I had been with Caro we had double dated and Ava had never been anything but incredibly kind to me.

“I’m surprised that you don’t already know. It seems that everyone else does.” He took his phone out of his pocket. It lit up as if he had a text, but the expression he wore told me that it wasn’t from his wife.

“I ignored the vicious rumour because I thought you were better than that.”

“I guess I’m not as good as you thought then.” He spoke harshly and I couldn’t tell if he was mad at me for what I had said or if he was just mad at himself.

“I think you let your pressure to be perfect get the better of you. Did Ava reply?” I pointed to his phone, now balancing on his thigh.

He shook his head.

“It’s my parents wondering where I am. Luckily my brother is around and he took them out to dinner to distract them, but I should probably be getting home.” He stood, snatching up his phone and tucking it into his pocket.

I saw the name flash on the screen then. We all knew who she was. She hung around our team wherever we were, like a bad smell. I knew that they had a history that she hadn’t quite let go of but no one who knew Mats really well ever went into any detail with that story, preferring to just say that the girl was trouble. He had just blatantly lied to my face, and I didn’t appreciate that.

“Thanks for the beer.” He put the bottle down on my coffee table and made his way to my door. I followed him like a shadow, keeping a few steps back. He was like a loose cannon, or a bomb about to detonate and I didn’t want to be around when he exploded.

“I’ll see you at training. I hope you work things out. If she answers me I’ll let you know. What should I tell her if she replies?” I leant against the doorframe, Mats was half way out.

“Tell her I miss her.”

_Ava_

Soaking in the bath had given me a little time to think, well as much time as it took for the water to cool, the bubbles to disappear and my iPod to run out of battery.

I’d left my phone on the dresser. As I wrapped my bathrobe tightly around myself I looked down at the screen.

Another message from Reus.

**Cathy huh?**

I was sure that Mats would not have confessed, not yet. His mother had taught him better than that, his public persona was everything and something like this would ruin the image he had built for himself.

 **Now I know he didn’t tell you that.** I typed back, my fingers were still wet from the bath so I struggled, perching on the edge of the bed. It was chilly in Tom’s house, he probably didn’t know how his heating worked.

 **You’re right, I had to read the name off of his phone screen and put two and two together.** He went straight to Marco, when there were other people he could have gone to, and as I wondered why, my phone buzzed again.  **There was a rumour weeks back and I was the only one to not believe it. How stupid I feel now.**

Of course. Marco, who had been out of the team for a while with injury after injury had been out of the loop. Mats went to the last person to believe in him.

 **Dortmund just became an even bigger hell. I can’t avoid everyone.** I sighed, putting my phone down. I grabbed a small towel and ran it through my hair as I waited for him to reply. Because he considered us friends, he wanted me to know that he had nothing to do with it. If Marco had known, I had every confidence that he would have actually told me. Not that I blamed Mats’ team mates at all. They heard a rumour, they had no proof that their captain had actually been playing away and if it had turned out not to be true they would have put me through hell over nothing.

 **You don’t have to avoid me.** Ha, he was right.

I pressed the call button next to Emma in my contacts. Marco had made me realise that actually, I wasn’t alone. I had a friend who was going through a similar hard time, and if I knew Emma she would be up for going out and getting dizzyingly drunk.

I explained what had happened to her, and she asked no questions and didn’t push me for details. The last thing she giggled into the microphone of her phone was ‘we need to take a cab because I’ve already started on the schnapps’.

**_II._ **

“I think you set me up for defeat here. How is it so difficult to pull the bones out of a little fish?” he leant in close to me, his fishy hands threateningly close to my face. I nearly gagged at the smell.

“You’ve never seen a whole salmon before have you?” I laughed, moving closer to the stove where I had started on a sauce for the salmon, and where I had set my glass of wine down. Mats had poured me a large.

“That sauce smells a million times better than the fish does. What is it? It looks like syrup.” He came close again, and I pinched my nose. He laughed at that.

“It’s orange and vodka, I thought it might loosen your mother up a bit…” I covered my mouth to choke back my laughter and then I heard her voice coming from upstairs.

“What does she want now?” he asked.

I shrugged in response. “I’m not sure love, but I think you should go and see what it is before she shouts down again.”

_Mats_

I took the hint. Ava was tired, and she didn’t need my mother chewing her ear off about this being out of place, and that being out of place. I ran upstairs as fast as I could, passing by the living room which was where my father was settled reading a book. I made it upstairs quicker than I thought I would, just as my mother stood on the landing about to call me again.

“What is the emergency?” I asked.

She gave me a stern, cold look before motioning for me to follow her into the guest bedroom. My heart sank. She did this every time she had some bad news to break, like when my first professional contract fell through and every time I got a less than satisfactory grade at school.

“Your coach is concerned Mats.” She said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. I was too tense to sit down, wondering what point she was going to make here. I was at a loss for words.

“Then why hasn’t he come to me? If he is concerned about my performance he should-” She cut me off.

“It’s not your performance on the pitch that is of concern, it’s what you choose to do off the field that is most worrying.” She folded her arms in front of her.

“What exactly?” I shook my head in disbelief. She couldn’t possibly know, no one could have found out, we had been so careful.

“There is a vicious rumour that you are having an affair with that trollop Cathy, please tell me it isn’t true. You may have made that mistake when you were a teenager, but it has been 10 years Mats, and you are married now. I think we both know there is more than just your marriage at stake here. Please tell me you are not that stupid…” she stood up then and took steps towards me. I was glued in place, my palms sweating and my cheeks bright red.

“It’s a lie.” I said, lying through my teeth. I hoped that she wouldn’t question me further, would choose to believe her own son over a rumour. That’s when she pulled the red lace lingerie out of the pocket of her jacket.

“Now I know that Ava does not wear things like this. I’ve checked the drawers and find no matching bra. I also know that dear Ava is very tidy and would not leave things like this laying around, especially not when she is expecting a visit from us. How long ago was she here hm? Hours? Days? How do you do it in your marital bed?” she fired accusations and questions at me in quick succession, a tactic she knew always made me crumble.

“You are insane. What right do you have to snoop around my home like this?” I countered.

“What right do you have to cheat on that lovely wife of yours?” she spat.

“Lovely wife? That lovely wife you belittle all the time? The one who has been distressed for weeks, worrying about the opinion you have of her, always vying for your approval.” If my mother was going to attack me, I was going to give as good as I got.

“I would like to see Cathy make such efforts. Have you finished lying to me now?” she walked back to the bed and sat down again.

“Yes. Lying to you does no good does it mother? You see straight through me, straight through the perfect image.”

“That’s because it’s the perfect image that I built, and I will do anything to protect it, including keeping quiet about this.” She spoke softly then, as if she feared that we would be overheard.

“My image really means a lot to you doesn’t it?” I laughed.

The situation was ridiculous. Had I actually expected her to go running downstairs to Ava waving the red lingerie in the air? My mother didn’t do things like that, she didn’t cause a scene unless she were the centre of attention. She didn’t care for Ava enough to tell her the truth.

“It does. I will not tell Ava, so long as this thing with Cathy ends. You end it today. If I hear anything else concerning that girl I will make you tell Ava yourself, and I will make you publicly apologise to her in front of the media for humiliating her and breaking your vows.” She threw the lingerie at me then, and stormed past me, to my father I presumed who she would tell all of this to later, when he was out of Ava’s earshot. “One last thing.” She said as she stood at the door.

“Yes?” I whined.

“I know that you hate Salmon.”


End file.
